She goes on to make a point about coffee culture; that it began in Vienna, Warsaw, Prague and Budapest, and attracted "poets, literati, revolutionaries and other assorted riffraff," saying that today's Warsaw students are just the same, upwardly mobile, eager to embrace Starbucks as a symbol of prosperity, capitalism and the kind of leisure only hard-working creative and technical workers can afford. (That is to say, leisure in small bursts while en route to work or during "networking" meetings.)

In a conclusion to her piece that would make my 12th-grade Comp-Lit teacher proud, Applebaum writes of Starbucks, "we have reached the end of a cycle. Born in Central Europe, where it embodied an ideal of luxury and a certain set of aspirations; landing in Seattle, where it came to embody a different kind of luxury and a different set of aspirations; now reimported to Central Europe, aesthetically transformed but essentially fulfilling the same function, the coffeehouse appears to have come full circle, at last." Ms. Swenson loved a full circle.

And so must Starbucks, ironically but gladly reaping the benefits of a culture unsullied by... well, Starbucks. They aren't tired of the green mermaid, yet, and the coffee company would do well not to get pulled into another full circle, becoming ubiquitous and devoid of quality. Maintaining that "prosperity" mystique in the face of a real, two-century-old one threaded with astonishing, dramatic history and a proud association with artists, writers, and revolutionaries will be a challenge indeed.